Some universities have plagiarism detection systems and to tell if you're copying from your buddy who took the course last year they store all submitted work. Often these systems are outsourced to companies like 'turnitin' [1] which can also compare work between universities. Work is stored forever, and if anyone submits something similar to your work, professors get to see both side by side for comparison.
In order to store students work in the plagiarism detection system, the student has to grant the university/turnitin an appropriate copyright license.
There's a big difference between granting the school a non-exclusive copyright licence (including one that allows them to sublicense to anti-plagiarism companies), and assigning them your copyright. I'd be happy to do the first, but not the second.
> is it even possible to grant a non-exclusive, non-revocable license?
...Yes?
IAN(Y)AL. But licences aren't revocable by default. If I grant you a licence by contract, then you have a licence. If I want to revoke it, I have two options.
- One, I can ask you if you'd be willing to waive/vary the contract, in return for some good consideration. But you don't have to accept.
- Two, I can send you a letter saying "I revoke your licence", sue you, and crucially, try to convince a judge to imply a term into the contract that allows me to revoke the license. Which is pretty hard. Terms aren't implied lightly. Especially if I put the word "irrevocable" in the contract, no-one's going to imply a clause saying the exact opposite.
Important thing: "by contract". If I grant you a licence gratuitously, outside of a contract or deed, that's different.
> Questioned about the policy after it was introduced, Jacobs said it was never the board’s “intention to declare ownership” of students’ work. “Counsel needs to restructure the language,” Jacobs said. “We want the district to get the recognition . . . not take their work.” Jacobs said last week that it was possible amendments could be made to the policy at the board’s next meeting. The board approved the policy for consideration by a vote of 8 to 1 last month but has removed the item from its agenda Thursday.
I don't see the connection. Vanity publishers make money from the author by basically selling books with a big markup.
Here they are just taking IP (of which 99.999% is going to be basically valueless). The only part that might make money would be selling lesson plans, but that would become a saturated market pretty quick.
A vanity publisher runs a poetry "competition"; they award a first, second, and third prize. They then publish all entries in a book, and people buy the book too see their poem in "print".
Schools now do something similar, but without the competition.
To give plagiarism more teeth? To deter students from copying each-others notes? To reinforce a policy of students accessing knowledge from only legitimate sources (ie: textbooks)? The applications are numerous and potentially lucrative.
* Sue students that are plagiarizing (copying answers)
* Sue students are assisting plagiarism (allowing others to copy answers)
* Regulate libraries as intermediaries for transmitting and publishing unlicensed content (eg: counterfeit books, unlicensed books), inadequately securing the photocopying machines, borrowed material, and other potentially infringing assets
* Sue libraries for encouraging, enabling, or facilitating infringement (ie: studying)
I foresee a future where libraries are regulated and managed in the same manner that ISPs are, perhaps even more-so due to the physical limitations and monetization of the unlicensed content available.
I made an app for my county's online grade book and would definitely hate it if my app was considered the county's work now. This is somewhat scary because my county(Loudoun) is close to Prince Georges.
